Prospero's Half-Life by Trevor Zaple Read Free Book Online Page B

certificate. Richard nodded approvingly
at this but balked when she retrieved her tablet from the
bedroom.
    “ Do you really think that’s even necessary?” he asked. She eyed
him coolly and slipped the thin, oddly heavy device into the
bag.
    “ Do you have any idea how much I had to pay for that?” she
asked levelly. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything to you, but that
doesn’t mean that it doesn’t mean anything to me”.
    “ I just think it seems like a waste of space”
    “ You’re a waste of space,”
    “ That’s not very nice,” he recoiled, stung. “I just don’t think
we should pack things we won’t have a use for”.
    “ We might have a use for it,” she replied. “Or we might be able
to trade it to someone. I’m not leaving it behind, anyway. This was
a lot of money for us”.
    “ It was your choice to buy it,” he said. “No one forced you to
do it”.
    She eyed him
oddly until he felt acutely uncomfortable with it. He shrugged his
shoulders slightly.
    “ Alright,” he amended, “you’re right, it probably has some
trade value”. Samantha did not speak to him again until they had
hoisted up the supplies and left the apartment. They paused on the
balcony to listen to the sounds of the city before they departed.
From far off there was a bevy of car alarms braying; there was a
pop that might have been gunfire, or really anything. Richard
realized that he’d never really taken the time to stand still and
listen to the sounds of the city he lived in. He would never again
get the chance to hear it as it had originally been intended, and
this saddened him in a way that brushed at something nameless
buried deep within him. He suddenly felt very lonely and looked to
Samantha. She was staring off into the parking lot, watching for
any movement. Richard did not see any, but he let her take as long
as she needed.
    Finally she looked at him and her look was flinty. I’ve really pissed her off he thought suddenly, and tried to think of what it might have
been that had set her off.
    “ Shall we?” she asked, and her tone, at least, was warm. He
smiled with some confidence and gestured ahead. After you .
    They descended
the staircase and crossed through the parking lot briskly, keeping
a careful and tense eye on their surroundings. The wind freshened
past them and they caught the scent of burning lumber on it, but it
was gone as quickly as it had come. They turned left, away from
Queenston Street and the hospital. There was another parking lot
across the street, serving a spillover building from the hospital,
and they crept by it with no small sense of paranoia. They were
soon surrounded by quiet fifty-year-old houses, and they allowed
themselves to relax. There was a strange, hushed beauty to the
street; the blown wind was the only immediate sound. Most of the
windows on the street were intact, and the blinds were open in some
of them. Richard felt odd walking past the houses where the blinds
were shit; he felt as though the blinds had been drawn so that the
occupants could bleed out in peace.
    Like walking past a row of tombs he
thought, and the idea severely disturbed him. He suddenly imagined
himself surrounded on all sides by the mouldering,
crimson-splattered dead, and he began to shiver uncontrollably. His
hand shot out and found Samantha’s; her lithe, tough hand curled
into his with an eager force. They walked hand-in-hand in the
center of the roadway, feeling like two children lost inside a
haunted house that stretched on forever.
    Here and there
were windows with wide plywood planks nailed across them, and doors
that were double-boarded in the same fashion. Richard was strongly
reminded of photos of hurricane preparations in the American south;
the people who had fled these houses were also fleeing a sort of
natural disaster, he realized, and had thought that maybe there
would be something worthwhile coming back to, in the end. Looking
around, Richard was rather doubtful of this. The